Days of Thunder
by Harry-A-History
Summary: Harry's had enough of Vernon, and Dumbledore for that matter. He finally takes his fate into his own hands and escapes from the Dursleys one night. Starts of difficult but hoping to turn it into an EPIC! Eventual super power, some Grey Harry! With magical quests, time turners, the undead and more. Will be canon couples in the end, some OOC, mostly AU. Will be novel length :)


I own nothing. It all belongs to JK Rowling, I'm just playing in her sandbox :)

* * *

Harry potter was screaming.

This was not an unusual occurrence. In fact Harry spent the majority of his nights screaming and didn't find the event unusual in the slightest. Eventually the boy woke and sat bolt upright on his too small bed, managing to stop the deafening sound in an effort to prevent the vomit that was threatening to escape him.

Unfortunately for Harry his relatives were not so well adapted, and found his "midnight yodelling" most offensive. Harry had, through no fault of his own, woken them every night for the past three weeks and Vernon Dursley was not a man who managed sleep deprivation Harry's surprise it was not Vernon that came barrelling into the room this night, but Dudley who would normally stay in bed and let his father deal with it. Barrelling was perhaps an overstatement in Dudley's case. Harry felt the landing shake as he approached, it then stopped as his overlarge cousin squashed himself sideways through the door, and restarted as he then propelled himself towards Harry who was still sitting upright on his bed.

Dudley proceeded to pick Harry up by his neck and shake him violently, knocking Harry's head against the wall several times. Vernon entered the room behind his son and began to bellow at Harry so loudly that the words became mostly incoherent. Harry caught words such as freakish orphan, and no respect, which were the usual contents of any words Vernon directed at Harry. Dudley raised his other fist and punched the much smaller boy in the gut. This had the unfortunate effect of making Harry finally lose control of his stomach and he lost its contents in a messy splatter onto Dudley's head. Dudley dropped Harry back onto the bed and stared at him intently. The last thing Harry recalled that night was the sound of his cousin's fist connecting with his jaw.

* * *

Harry woke the following morning with a pounding headache. He looked at his clock, which informed him it was 6.30am, and then rushed down to the kitchen to get breakfast started before his relatives arrived. He threw some bacon and eggs into a pan, then made himself a large bowl of muesli which he ate as quickly as possible while still cooking, knowing this was the only food he would be getting before the Dursleys went back to bed tonight.

Moody's end of term pep talk to the Dursleys appeared to have had the exact opposite effect intended. Harry had had the worst summer he could remember since the second year incident with the window bars. He had so far lived on a diet consisting entirely of cereal, burnt toast and left over fruit that Petunia had declared unfit for anybody else. Vernon in particular was extremely angry about Moody's attempt to publicly humiliate him, and Harry had learnt to expect a beating on an almost daily basis and without any provocation.

Harry was on edge. When he wasn't carrying on with the list of chores Petunia presented him with every morning he spent his time trying to listen to news broadcasts from under windows and behind doors. He knew that there had been attacks and that people were dying. Bridges had collapsed, shopping malls had blown up, and there had been an extraordinary number of multi-car pile ups on the M25. The magical world was going to war and he was trapped here with his relatives, beaten, mal-nourished and sleep deprived, painting Petunia's garden fence rather than getting the training he was desperately in need of if he was to have any chance of defeating Voldemort. He was frustrated. A whole school year had passed but there he was, right back to the same place he was the year before. The only post was a solitary OK that came back from the Order every three days in response to his own letters. Nobody on the other end seemed to have noticed that Vernon was writing these letters.

The nightmares were becoming a problem, even for him. Harry had been practicing Occlumency daily and so far hadn't had any dreams he could directly link to Voldemort, but the list of people who had died in his name was extending and Harry suffered a parade of their faces every night, with other friends and family added into the mix and no means of escape or comfort.

Petunia entered the kitchen and gave Harry a scathing look. He flipped bacon, eggs and sausages onto a serving platter, finished buttering the toast and dumped the whole lot unceremoniously in the middle of the dining table. Then he washed his bowl and his hands and made his exit through the back door as quickly as possible.

Despite both the lack of food and the bruises, Harry had been going for a run every day for the last 2 weeks. He found it helped to clear his head and took this time to clear out his mind and construct his Occlumency wards. The only piece of mail that Harry had truly received this summer was just after the end of term and came from Hermione, a book on Occlumency that she had picked up at Diagon alley on her way home from the train. It only served to add to Harry's anger. He read the book from cover to cover, twice, in an attempt to distract himself from Sirius's death and it turned out that the whole process was far more complicated than Snape's basic "clear your mind" instruction.

If one wanted to be sufficient in Occlumency there was first a requirement to develop a method of basic meditation and to use this method to sort thoughts into sensible categories. One of the suggested meditation methods had been running, and Harry found this effective so had taken up his daily jog. The next step involved visually building walls inside the mind and working them into a sort of personal maze or fortress. Harry had been working on this at night and already had the basic outline of his defensive structure, though it needed enhancements. As he understood it once he had built up several layers of defensive wall he could start to reinforce these walls with runes and spells, the same way one would around ones home. Harry had sent of a letter to Hermione in that first week requesting her third year runes book, but was yet to get a response.

He ran 4 laps of the local park, which he figured to be about 2 miles. It wasn't a big park and years of Quiddich practice meant harry wasn't particularly unfit, but he wasn't a marathon runner either and this still took him about 50 minutes. It was still an improvement on where he had started however. Harry had read one of Dudley's training books when he wasn't looking and was trying to get down to a 9 minute mile like they did in the military. He still found it ponderous that the enormous boy had managed to become a county boxing champion and still appear just as fat as ever.

Harry shook the errant though from his mind and peered through the kitchen window. The Dursleys had finished their breakfast and gone elsewhere. Harry assumed Vernon to work and Petunia to some women's institute gossiping session. He would put money on Dudley going back to bed. He snuck back in through the back door and up to the bathroom where he took a quick shower and dashed back to his room in nothing but a towel. Once he was dressed he returned to the kitchen to see which mediocre chores Petunia had left for him today.

Finish painting the fence. Mow the lawn. Prune all the flowers. Hoover through the whole house. Harry cringed. It was a particularly hot day and he didn't own a hat. Yesterday got a beating for smelling of sun cream he had used out of the bathroom, that he clearly hadn't paid for as he was an "insolent and selfish brat", and he wasn't keen to repeat the experience.

Shrugging his shoulders and bracing himself for sunburn, Harry made his way out into the garden and dug through the shed for the mower. Using some common sense he cut the grass and the flowers before getting onto the fence, to prevent the grass sticking to the wet paint. By early afternoon he was pulling out the paint cans again and Petunia had returned from wherever it was she went. She came out into the garden and screeched at him for not having it all painted yet. Harry mistakenly tried to explain his logic, but Petunia merely screeched at a higher pitch and announced she was calling Vernon.

Harry brushed it off. Vernon would find some reason to hurt him without Petunia's assistance and it wasn't worth worrying over. He finished off the fence and went inside, brushing grass off his feet in the kitchen and sweeping it back out the door. He finished with the vacuum as quickly as possible then went and hid behind the living room door while Petunia watched the evening news. 16 homes had been destroyed in West London, it was believed to be arson and 12 children and 9 adults had died. There had been a series of break-ins at department stores in the area; the thieves did not appear to be interested in anything in particular except causing massive damage.

Harry left the hallway and went upstairs to his room. He could smell dinner cooking and knew he wouldn't be getting any. He picked up the book he had been reading, the standard book of spells grade 4, and then lay down on the bed. Since the beginning of the holidays Harry had been trying to reaffirm everything he knew about magic. So far he had got through all of his History, Transfiguration and Defence books, and was now into Charms. He was absorbed in the book and didn't hear Vernon's return from work until his bedroom door hit the wall. Vernon pulled Harry upright by his shirt and proceeded to scream at him for a good ten minutes before clipping the boy around the head, throwing him at the wall and leaving the room.

Harry sat on the floor where he landed. He cautiously felt his chest and thought that he had broken at least two ribs where he hit the door frame. He wondered why he was sitting there and what purpose it truly had and the scheme of things. Dumbledore went on about keeping him safe, but he felt anything but. Harry took a run every morning. Vernon made a point of hurting him at least once a day. Harry knew the order had at least one member who could see through walls, and nobody stopped him from leaving the house. Now that he considered it he hadn't even seen Mrs Figg this summer.

For the first time Harry wondered on the legality of his presence in the Dursley household. He was far from welcome here and most of the magical world knew it, following various news reports both true and false. He found it odd that a people who as a wider rule avoided the muggle population all together, would allow one of their children, a national hero no less, to be raised by people who openly despised magic. He thought it was odd that his parents did not appoint more than one guardian for him. In the middle of the war Sirius could just as easily have died in the same battle as them and there had to have been some contingency. Harry refused to believe that his mother would willingly hand him over to Vernon Dursley; she would just as likely have given him to Voldemort.

Harry found himself moving without really thinking about it. He collected all of his books and clothes and packed them neatly into his trunk, then he pulled up the floor board under his bed and got out his wand, invisibility cloak and money bag. He checked in the bag and was certain he had enough money to at least get him to Gringotts.

Enough was enough. Harry had a basic plan, to get to London, get some money and get a solicitor before the sun had really come up tomorrow. From there he didn't know what would happen but he wasn't spending another day at the mercy of the Dursleys, or Dumbledore for that matter, when he should be doing something about Voldemort.

Harry lifted his trunk, grateful for the very small amount of muscle the running had given him, and carried it silently down the stairs. He left it at the bottom and went back up to get Hedwig's cage. She was off delivering one of Vernon's letters to the Order so he took the cage and shut the window, hoping she would get the picture and locate him wherever he was. Looking at the hallway clock harry realised it was past midnight and wondered how long he had sat thinking. He went into the kitchen and took a block of cheese, some fruit and a chocolate bar from the fridge. He wasn't coming back so it's not like Vernon could harm him.

Harry pulled the invisibility cloak over his head and got the trunk in as best he could. He realised Hedwig's cage wasn't going to fit, so he opened the cupboard under the stairs and shoved it in. He took one last look at the tiny little box room and it only served to confirm that this was the right thing to do. He could get a new cage elsewhere when he wasn't on the run.

He left through the garage door, the theory being that Vernon often left the outside open but it was still technically in the house so any miscreant Order members wouldn't be watching all that hard. Harry heaved the trunk up again, and then walked as silently and quickly as possible to the end of Privet Drive. He took a good look around and couldn't spot any Order, so he lifted the trunk again and walked to the gate of the park at the end of Wisteria Walk. Then he put the trunk down and dragged it silently but at a run over the grass in the park and out the far gate.

There was a bus stop here and the road was bigger and busier in the day time. Nobody should really notice a bus at a bus stop if they hadn't already noticed the charge they were supposed to be guarding doing a runner. Harry raised his wand and waited. Less than 15 seconds later the knight bus appeared before him and Stan dropped out onto the pavement. Harry shoved a hand over his moth before he could get into his speech. He looked at Harry and his eyes widened so Harry put a finger to his lips to shush the other man. Stan nodded and grabbed the other end of Harry's trunk, hauling it up onto the bus.

"Where to Mr Potter?"

"Can you stop outside Gringotts, Stan?" requested Harry. Stan nodded and pointed Harry at a bed, taking from him 11 sickles and shoving the trunk into a rack underneath. Harry settled in for the journey content to know that for now he was safe from Vernon, if nobody else...


End file.
